


Stand still for a minute (let me catch up)

by Trotter



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Cheesecake, Jisung eats a lot of chocolate and swears a lot, M/M, Mentions of Previous Relationships, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 21:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15591444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trotter/pseuds/Trotter
Summary: Chan goes through a breakup, and Jisung is there to help. He conveniently chooses to ignore the fact that he's been in love with Chan for years.It goes just as well as you'd expect.





	Stand still for a minute (let me catch up)

Bambam’s and Chan’s thing ended four days before Christmas. Jisung knocked on his door, because he’d lost his copy of _Wicked_ and thought that maybe Chan had borrowed it. Chan was quiet for a minute, and Jisung assumed he was doing that Chan thing of fighting between his instinct to yell at Jisung for losing important stuff and his innate helpfulness, when he said,

“Bambam and I broke up.”

“Oh shit,” Jisung said.

“I mean, we weren’t—we weren’t dating, to start with—” Chan’s throat closed with a _click._ He gave a faint smile. “But yeah. Anyway. We’re not—together anymore.”

“Oh, hyung,” Jisung said. He went over to him and wrapped his hands around Chan’s broad shoulders, slumped now, smaller than Jisung had ever seen him. “I don’t know what to say.”

Chan blinked a little tearily at him, and smiled. “Say _It’s gonna be alright._ And I think I saw Wicked on Hyunjinnie’s nightstand yesterday.”

“Fuck Wicked,” Jisung said, and startled a laugh out of Chan, a small subdued bark.

“Aren’t you going to tell me it’s going to be alright?”

“He didn’t deserve you,” Jisung said instead, fierce. Then: “I’m kind of bad at this.”

“It’s okay,” Chan said.

“Want to eat my double chocolate cake I got yesterday?”

“It’s bad for you to eat cake every day, Jisungie.”

“But do you?” Jisung pressed.

Chan’s eyes were rimmed with red, and before Jisung had hugged him he’d been holding his Toto plushie so tight a bit of the stuffing had leaked out of the hole in its side.

Chan glanced at his phone, lying a few feet away from his bed like he’d flung it as far as he could.

“Yes please.”

 

When the dog in the movie got sick, Chan began to cry.

“Bambam loved dogs,” was his choked-up explanation.

Jisung switched the movie off and crowded to his side.

“I just— we always--”

Jisung leaned his shoulder into his back.

When Chan’s tears petered out into a sniffle, he put a spoonful of cake in his mouth. “It’s sweet,” he said, sounding surprised.

Jisung nodded, and started the movie again.

It was the holidays, so there was no one else in the dorms. Even Felix had flown back to Aussie; with only Chan, who was too busy for holidays, and Jisung, who saw his parents every weekend, the dorm was a quieter, stranger place.

The next morning Chan looked like he hadn’t slept much. He clutched his mug of coffee like it was a lifeline.

Looking at him, Jisung decided: “Time for a walk. Up, up. Put your coat on, c’mon, Chan.”

He wasn’t using honorifics. Usually that’d get him a couple of raised eyebrows from the eldest hyungs, and enthusiastic yelling from Changbin, but in this empty dorm, with just the two of them, it felt like the only thing he _could_ call him. Chan.

Sometimes it was easy to forget that, before they were groupmates, before they were a hyung and his bratty dongsaeng, they were friends. Before there was Stray Kids –before there was this group that was bigger than all nine of them—there’d been Chan and Jisung, two trainees who looked at each other and saw the potential that was stamped across their bones.

Jisung realized with a start that he was the one who’d known Chan the longest.

“You don’t have to try so hard to cheer me up,” Chan said, allowing himself to be pushed out of the door.

Jisung wrapped a scarf around him with flourish. “Who says I’m cheering you up? When we stop for breakfast, you’re paying.”

Chan didn’t even protest, just rolled his eyes. “Fine, but no chocolate.”

Jisung knew a losing battle when he saw one. “No chocolate,” he agreed with a sigh. “But I demand those hot onion thingies at the station.”

They waddled outside.

“No snow,” Chan said in disappointment.

Jisung squinted at him. “How long has it been since you went out of the dorm? It hasn’t snowed the whole season.”

“Yeah, but,” Chan sighed. “If it’d been snowing it would have been a sign.”

“Of?”

“I dunno. Things changing, maybe?” Chan scuffed his foot on the ground.

Jisung looked at him for a bit.

“Change of plans,” he announced. “We’re taking you skiing.”

 

“I have songs to write,” Chan protested, as Jisung bought their bus tickets.

“So hum them, and I’ll freestyle. Let’s re-engineer the songwriting process.”

“We can’t just sing in _public_.”

“If we couldn’t,” Jisung said, “would we have become idols in the first place?”

 

After a day in the ski resort, both of them were too knackered to do much. They went down to the studio the next day and recorded a demo for a song that almost certainly wouldn’t make it to the final tracklist, because it was just Chan screaming and Jisung rapping nonsense over it. They named it after a swear word and saved it to scandalize Changbin later.

A week later they went to a cello class that was, miraculously, conducted by a teenage prodigy named Park Jinyoung.

“Yah, Park Jinyoung-ah!” Jisung called, for the fifth time that day as Chan exploded into giggles. “Where are we supposed to put our fingers for C?”

The teenager looked like he sorely regretted letting them in, because any innate talent Chan had for the cello was undermined by how hard Jisung was making him laugh. Once he went over the basics and started walking away, Jisung whispered, loud enough to carry: _JYP._

Chan fell off his chair laughing.

After they were kicked out, Chan made Jisung treat him for lunch; _emotional damages,_ he said, like Jisung couldn’t _see_ him fighting a smile.

They were sitting on wicker chairs waiting for their food at Chan’s favorite twenty four-hour breakfast place, drinking their juice, and Chan looked over at him and smiled, and leaned over the space between their chairs and pressed his mouth softly against Jisung’s.

Fireworks went off in Jisung’s brain. He could write songs about this.

“Good?” Chan said, pale cheeks flushed with color.

“Good,” Jisung said, and pulled him back in.

 

That month Jisung kissed Chan at the arcade, a paintball tournament, an artsy Japanese cinema, a restaurant in Hongdae that only served beans, a cat café, a dog café, a sewing class, a cooking class, and a Seventeen concert.

“I can’t believe you got tickets for this,” Chan shouted over the music, eyes shining.

“I’ve got friends in all sorts of places,” Jisung said. He waggled his eyebrows. Then he admitted: “My brother works as a stylist at Pledis.”

Chan snorted. “Then just say that, you dork.”

Later, they posed backstage for a photo with Seventeen.

“He’s your age,” Jisung said, noticing the way Chan sighed at Dokyeom’s broad retreating back.

“I know,” Chan flushed. “He’s—they’re all so tall and handsome. Very cool.”

“I’m cool too,” Jisung said, puffing up his cheeks.

Chan kissed him, quickly, and pulled back before anyone could see. “You’re something, alright.”

 

They were lying in their beds –Jisung in Changbin’s, because that’s where he’d naturally wound up after a day of singing his lungs out in their room, (later, he would snuggle into Chan's side, maybe)—when Chan said, into the darkness,

“You know, I really used to hate you.”

Jisung stilled.

He’d guessed something along those lines, but, “Hate is a strong word.”

“It is,” Chan agreed ruefully. “It’s the right one though. I did hate you. You were just a baby when you came, but you were already so good at everything I’d worked hard at.”

“I worked hard too,” Jisung said. Something in his chest was cold, tight.

“I know.”

“You weren’t the only one who had it tough.”

“I know.”

Jisung carefully climbed down from the bunk bed. “I think I’m gonna sleep in my room tonight.”

Chan’s eyes caught the nightlight and looked like stars. He was—Jisung wanted—

“Okay,” Chan said.

 

The next morning the rest of the kids started trickling in, starting from Changbin and Hyunjin. Changbin flung a box of chocolates at Jisung, tsundere-style, and swaggered into his and Chan’s room.

Ten minutes later Jisung could hear him screaming, “Only _three songs_? In a _month_? Channie-hyung, are you _dying_?”

Hyunjin quirked an eyebrow at Jisung. “Three songs, huh.”

Jisung made a face back at him. “He’s not a music factory.”

“No one except Channie-hyung himself actually thinks that,” Hyunjin said. Then, softer: “Did something happen?”

Jisung busied himself with ripping Changbin’s present open. “He broke up with Bambam.”

“Ah.”

Hyunjin’s voice was packed with all too much meaning. All of ’00 line had figured Jisung out early on, by virtue of almost all of them being in love with their hyung line.

“Yeah,” said Jisung. “I, uh, tried to cheer him up. It didn’t go well.”

Unable to face the pity in Hyunjin’s eyes, he popped a chocolate in his mouth and let it melt, sweet and warm on his tongue.

 

The day after that, there was a huge cheesecake sitting on his bed.

“I wanted to get a really fancy one, you know,” Chan said, scratching his neck, “but then I remembered your whole _quantity over quality_ thing and got this instead.”

“I don’t want it,” Jisung said. Then, more truthfully he added: “You didn’t have to.”

“It’s a thank you. For last month.”

“I didn’t do it because—I didn’t want—” Jisung took a deep breath. “I thought we were friends.”

Chan said, “But we are friends.”

“You said you hate me.”

“I said I _used_ to hate you. Before all this. Before Stray Kids.”

“I used to follow you around everywhere,” Jisung said. “Did you hate me then?”

Chan looked at the ground, and Jisung sighed.

“Get out, Chris.”

It wasn’t bad enough to get worked up over, or enough to start acting like he was heartbroken or something. Jisung played around with all the other members, clambered on Minho’s back for piggybacks and wrestled Felix till they were both breathless and panting. He went to the producer’s room and made weird noises into a mic so that Chan could sample them, but it was hard to pretend that he didn’t know what he knew, hadn’t heard Chan say _I hated you_ in his calm summer-breeze voice.

 

“Well, this is certainly new,” Minho said.

Jisung wordlessly offered him a spoon, which Minho took and dipped into the ice cream.

“Hyung,” Jisung said, “do you hate me?”

“Of course,” Minho said easily, and Jisung momentarily stopped sulking to gape at him. “You leave your socks everywhere. You eat everything I leave in the fridge. You taught Jeonginnie seven different swear words. You’re despicable.”

“Hyung, be serious,” Jisung whined.

“What makes you think I’m not,” Minho said, but his eyes were shining. “What brought this on?”

Jisung swirled his spoon in the melted goo of his ice cream. “Nothing.”

“Nothing to do with how Channie-hyung’s been trying to cheer you up these past few weeks?”

“He’s not _cheering me up_ ,” Jisung said, frowning.

“Oh, so then he’s courting you.”

“He’s— _what_?”

Minho shrugged. “As I’ve seen, he’s given you enough chocolate to rot all your teeth, and he’s always staring at you during team meetings.”

“That’s just,” Jisung said, searching for an explanation. He came up empty.

“He hates me,” he said instead.

Minho said, “Oh really,” but it felt like he was humoring Jisung, which made Jisung sulk further. Only the ice cream drove the unhappiness away.

 

After the initial sting of rejection passed, Jisung felt kind of ridiculous.

For one thing there was Chan, who kept feeding him chocolate. It was sweet—as gestures of apology went, Chan had hit the jackpot. But Jisung was an idol, and he needed all his teeth, so he guiltily began handing them off to the trainees when he met them in the hallways.

And then there were his members, who were well-intentioned but dumb as hell.

“I can’t believe Channie-hyung likes Jisungie,” Changbin said loudly, as he crunched into his cereal in the morning. “I thought he had better taste.”

“Is our concept going to be romance from now on?” Woojin asked on a different occasion, catching Jisung and Chan wrestling over the ownership of a bar of candy (Chan was trying to give it to Jisung, who was trying to give it back) “I’m not sure I’d look good in pink.”

“It isn’t what you think,” Jisung said.

“Sure,” said Woojin.

“We hate each other,” Jisung added, desperate to make the rest of Stray Kids stop cooing whenever Chan asked him to stay behind in the studio. 

Chan’s hands went lax around his candy bar, and it plopped into Jisung’s lap.

“I don’t hate you,” he said in a quiet voice.

Jisung blinked at him stupidly.

Chan gathered all his stuff off the floor. “I’ll be in the studio, then,” he said in a weird high voice.

“Take care,” Woojin said dryly. After he left, he gave a withering look to Jisung.

“Go after him, you stupid chipmunk,” he said.

Jisung clambered to his feet.

“I—he—”

“He likes you,” Woojin said, rolling his eyes. “You have eyes, so we assumed you knew.”

Jisung didn’t really know what to do with that. He followed Chan out the door.

 

“Are you writing sad poetry,” Jisung asked Chan, who’s shoulders hunched over his laptop when Jisung spoke.

“I’m writing sad EDM songs,” Chan said. “There’s a difference.”

“Listen,” said Jisung, leaning against the doorjamb awkwardly. “I’m sorry I got all pissed about you telling me you used to dislike me.”

“Hate,” Chan corrected.

“Hate, dislike, whatever, look, do you want us to make up or not?”

“Is that what we’re doing? Making up?”

Jisung looked at him through his lashes. He was going for flirty and seductive; it was a trick he’d learned from watching Minho’s fancams. “If that’s what you want.”

Chan seemed unaffected. “So we can be friends again,” he said in a flat voice.

Jisung deflated. “If that’s what you want,” he repeated, sincerely.

 “You—you said that that’s what we were. Friends.”

Jisung squinted at him, and Chan flushed and looked away.

“All those times you—we kissed, and went out, I thought you were just—making me forget. Cheering me up. Doing your duty as a friend.””

“You thought I kissed you because I was trying to cheer you up?” Jisung said, his knees kind of weak and hollow beneath him.

“Didn’t you?”

“I kissed you because I was in love with you for three years,” Jisung said, kind of yelling now, reveling in the way Chan’s eyes widened. “Why did _you_ kiss _me?”_

“Because you were kind.” Chan came across the room and stood in front of him. “You were younger than me but you tried your hardest to help.” He scrubbed a hand through his curls, and touched Jisung’s shoulder carefully with two fingers. “I’m always really happy, when I’m with you.”

Jisung went on his tiptoes and kissed him, one hand cupping his cheek. Chan made a surprised _oomph_ sound before he began kissing back, sliding his huge hands into the pockets of Jisung’s jeans.

“You don’t hate me anymore?” Jisung said, to confirm.

Chan shook his head solemnly. “Kinda falling towards the opposite right now, to be honest,” he said, in a conspiratorial whisper in Jisung’s ear.

“Good,” Jisung said firmly, and took two handfuls of Chan’s sweater.

“Good,” Chan agreed, and pressed his smile into Jisung’s waiting mouth.

 

**Author's Note:**

> heavily unedited, but I wanted to post this in celebration of the skz comeback. do feel free to point out any mistakes, i'm sure there are many. 
> 
> thanks for reading!


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